1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic communications systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for previewing calls in communications systems.
2. Related Art
In today's society, the abundance of technology-mediated communications systems/devices, such as the now ubiquitous cell phone, as well as pagers, text messages, etc., has increased not only the ability to communicate, but also the possibility of being interrupted. Quite often, users of such systems are interrupted by calls from various individuals. While existing communications equipment permits identification of a caller before a call is taken, such information is often insufficient for a recipient to make an informed decision as to whether to take the call, and hence, accept the interruption. As a result, there is currently an increased research focus on technology for managing such interruptions. For example, interruption management has focused on systems that make use of different interruption management strategies such as deferral, negotiation, collaborative, availability awareness, and notification.
A drawback to existing interruption management techniques is that they do not provide users of communications devices with sufficient information to make an informed decision as to whether to accept a call. For example, they do not provide an interruptee with sufficient information relating to relational context information, which encompasses people's preferences and biases of the relationship between the interrupter and interruptee (who), as well as factors relating to the interruption that vary with each interrupter (what and why). Accordingly, what is needed, but has not yet been provided, is a system and method for previewing calls in communications systems, which provides rich information to an interruptee to allow the interruptee to more efficiently and accurately manage incoming calls.